Lost Singapore childhood: 06 (Learning to swim) (Singapore)

 

Coconut harvests on Grandma’s plantation in Tampines provided a number of things:

• income for Grandma
• fuel for cooking — there was no electricity (or running water), just a village generator that worked from nightfall to 10/10.30pm [people slept early in those days and in those places]
• source of material for the children’s fun

    Grandma supported a big extended family: her brother’s widow and three children; her deceased sister’s son; an adopted son who was entrusted to her when she left China, so that the boy could have a better life in 南洋 nányáng / “south ocean” as S.E.Asia was known in those days.

    (Like her, my mother also supported a big extended family:  her own brood of five, plus her sister and one brother who lived with us, as well as an orphaned female cousin of my father’s.)

    A professional coconut picker would come along twice for each harvest:

• first, to cut the bunches of coconut down from the trees:  walk around the plantation with a long pole, a sickle attached to one end, and cut them down, leaving them on the ground.  Grandma and us would go round over the next few weeks to drag them to a spot to one side of the front of the house, piling them up to dry out for a while (can’t remember how long now, maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months);
• then return x weeks/months later to remove the husk (and the hard-shell inner part of the coconut would go to market).

    It was between these two stages, during the drying out phase, that we children would have extra fun that was not to be had at any other time of the year.

    As the plucked coconuts piled up higher and higher, we’d use them for running up as fast as we could (if possible, to the top) before being brought down to the bottom by the sliding coconuts.  Endless fun for the non-digital age generation in those days.  Not available at any other time of the year — where would one find coconuts piled up over a period of weeks/months, just sitting there??  Good exercise, too, for the legs, and for judgement:  how fast to dash up to try and beat the coconuts rolling down.

    The man would come back when the coconuts were properly dried out for him to remove the outer husk.  He’d hammer a big sturdy pole or stick into the ground, with a parang (knife that’s like a machete) firmly embedded in the top end, blade end upwards.  

    Over the next x days, he’d come every day to work on de-husking the coconuts:  jam the coconut into the parang tip, rotate the coconut for the parang to slice through the husk, but NOT all the way round, not a complete cycle, just the right amount of the circle to loosen the nut (the inner bit with the hard shell), but with the two halves still attached to each other, sort of butterfly shape.  

    The loosened hard-shell nut inside would be tossed to one side, the butterfly-shape husks to another.

    I don’t remember how the to-be-sold hard-shell parts were dealt with:  whether the man took them away, or we put them somewhere until a buyer came to collect.

    I do certainly remember, however, how we dealt with the butterfly-shape husks.  

    To save on paying him for what we could do ourselves, we’d cart them off to a shed (only a thatched roof and wooden railings, no walls) — to dry out over the next x months, to be used as fuel for cooking.  (The ashes would then be used for doing the dishes and cooking pots — no washing up liquid, but they would come out squeaky clean.)

    Us children would turn some of those butterfly-shape husks into floats for swimming on the fish pond.

    Because the two halves were attached, we could lie on our back on the fish pond, and slip the attached section under the ankle, elbow, wrist and nape, so that we’d have each half of the butterfly on the two sides of those parts of the body.  The buoyancy came from the resistance provided by the shiny outer skin and the lightness of the husk fibre.  This way, we were learning the backstroke without moving our arms, just the feet to propel us.

    To swim forwards, we’d lie on our tummy, place the butterfly-shape husks under our wrists, ankles and front of neck, and paddle with the feet to move.

    Very simple, home-made fun that cost us nothing.  And a way to keep cool in the tropical heat, again free of charge.

(Singapore, 1960s)